Despite the increasing popularity of online shopping, the vast majority of retail sales in the U.S. still take place in physical stores. According to U.S. Department of Commerce statistics, 90% of all retail sales in 2013, amounting to $4.3 trillion, occurred in physical stores. These staggering numbers were generated by an estimated 283 million U.S. consumers who visited physical retail locations in that year.
Unlike online sales, it is difficult to measure traffic, conversion rates, etc. in physical stores. In fact, most stores do not even keep accurate count of the number of visitors that walk through their doors. Door monitors, if they have them, tend to simply alert the proprietor as to the opening or passing through of a door, without any indication as to whether the visitor is entering or leaving the establishment and without saving information for later analysis.
To partially address this issue, a variety of systems have been developed to measure the number and direction of people traversing a particular passage or entrance per unit time. These systems are known variously as “foot traffic counters”, “people counters” and the like, and use a variety of technologies including infrared (IR) beams, computer vision, thermal imaging and pressure-sensitive mats. In the retail setting, foot traffic counters can be used to help the retailer determine a store's conversion rate (e.g. the percentage of a store's visitors that make purchases), can be used to optimize the staffing schedule for the store, etc. More advanced foot traffic counters can be used for queue management and customer tracking. Despite the advantages of foot traffic counting, it is estimated that less than 25% of major retailers track foot traffic in their stores.
Traf-Sys Inc. of Pittsburgh, Pa. provides a line of people counting sensors based upon computer vision and thermal (IR) sensing technologies. The Traf-Sys people counting sensors include overhead people counting sensors, which require wired network connections, and horizontal people counting sensors, which can wirelessly communicate with a dedicated Data Controller or which simply have a display.
A significant cost of installing networked monitoring systems is running wires between the various sensing devices and a central controller or hub. An increasingly popular wireless technology for connecting devices is known as Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). BLE hardware and software protocols are part of the Bluetooth 4.0 specification, released in 2010, incorporated herein by reference. Devices using the BLE standards for communication purposes consume much less power compared to devices using the previous “classic” Bluetooth standards, making it advantageous for battery-powered systems. Bluetooth low energy uses the same RF frequency spectrum range (2.4 GHz-2.4835 GHz) as classic Bluetooth, but the BLE protocol has lower data transfer rates. Both BLE and classic Bluetooth signals can reach up to about 100 meters.
BLE communication implements two main processes for linking devices, namely advertising and connecting. Advertising is a one-way discovery mechanism for BLE devices (“discoverable devices”). Discoverable devices can transmit data packets in intervals from about 20 ms to about 10 seconds. The packets can be up to 47 bytes in length and include a 1 byte preamble, a 4 byte access address, a 2-39 byes advertising channel Protocol Data Unit (PDU), and a 3 bytes Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC). The PDU, in turn, has a 2 byte header, a 6 byte Media Access Control (MAC) address, and up to 31 bytes of data.
A form of one-way wireless digital communication is to provide a beacon signal. As used herein, a “beacon signal” or “beacon” will refer to a digital radio frequency (RF) signal comprising one or more data packets transmitted on a periodic or non-periodic basis. The devices which produce beacon signals are also sometimes, themselves, referred to as “beacons,” but will be referred to herein as “beacon devices” or “devices” to avoid confusion with beacon signals.
Beacons based on BLE technology use only the advertisement channel of the BLE protocol. As the name suggests, a beacon transmits data packets at regular intervals which can be detected by compatible BLE-enabled devices such as smartphones. An advantage of BLE beacon devices is their low power consumption. For example, some BLE beacon devices can transmit beacons for several years, even when powered only by a small battery.
In June of 2013, Apple released its iBeacon™ profile, based upon BLE protocols, as part of its new iOS 7 operating system. With the iBeacon profile, the data portion (up to 31 bytes) of the data packet has a 9 byte iBeacon prefix, a 16 byte proximity UUID, a Major Number field of 2 bytes, a Minor Number field of 2 bytes, and 2 bytes of TX power. A new feature of iOS 7.1 allows a detected iBeacon signal to automatically activate an application (“app”) on, for example, an iPhone® (when permitted). That is, a potential use for iBeacon devices is to provide location-aware, context-aware, pervasive small wireless devices that can be used to accurately locate a store visitor's location within, for example, a store. However, the iBeacon devices cannot be used to detect visitors who do not have an iPhone, Android, or other smartphone compatible with iBeacon technology, or who have not turned on their smartphones, or who do not have a smartphone application that is both executing on the smartphone and compatible with the iBeacon signals, or do not have their Bluetooth enabled, or who have not given permission for iBeacon interaction for privacy reasons.
These and other limitations of the prior art will become apparent to those of skill in the art upon a reading of the following descriptions and a study of the several figures of the drawing.